This morning, Mackie Designs had a conference call for the analysts. It was interesting. The CFO read the press release located at
biz.yahoo.com
and then Greg Mackie spoke a bit, and then they introduced this guy named Stephen Ripp, the new COO.
During the question and answer session, we learned the following:
* The breakdown for the reported $16.1 million in revenue was: 23% was for 8-bus mixers ($3,703,000), 57% was for "compact mixers" ($9,177,000), 19% went to SR products, and 1% to other.
* The new speaker monitors and amp products go into production at end of November and will ship "before Christmas".
* There is a "strong back-order" of "several months" for the new products
* The new 40*8 mixer "will be the biggest dollar contributor for quite a while"
* Mackie described the size of the new markets the company is going into as being $1.9 billion
* Greg Mackie cites Yamaha as its biggest competitor in the digital mixer market
* A "novice" mixer for the amateur Fostex/Tascam market is being developed
* The 8-bus product line will be getting revamped in 1997, probably getting the "VLZ" treatment
* New analog and digital mixers will be coming out in 1st and 2nd Qtr 1997
* New products will be announced in all 4 qtrs of 1997
* An announcement about a new product will be made at the AES trade show in LA in early November 96
* There is similarity between the new amp products and the power supply product for existing 8 bus mixers, which simplified the manufacturing process for the new amp product
Greg Mackie seemed pretty optimistic in general, saying "I'm not concerned at all" about any problems with sales of the new products.
It'll be interesting to see what Mackie Designs' 4th qtr results look like. My personal hunch is that it's going to be similar to the 3rd qtr, and that means, also a bit disappointing. My take from the conf call was that given that the new products won't ship until late Nov (best case) or Dec (more likely), that doesn't give much time for 4th qtr revenues to be affected, but rather pushes most of the new sales into 1st qtr '97. |
